Ukraine denies Russia's claims of fully capturing Luhansk Oblast
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The Ukrainian military on April 1 denied Russia's claim that its troops have fully taken control of Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine.
Russia currently occupies the majority of the region, with the city of Luhansk and regional government controlled by Kremlin-installed proxies. But a small parcel of land on the western border of Luhansk Oblast remains contested.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on April 1 that its forces had "completed" the occupation of Luhansk Oblast.
The Ukrainian military dismissed the claim as propaganda.
Ukrainian troops are "holding the last lines of defense in the region," Ukraine's Third Assault Brigade said in a post on Telegram.
"Symbolically, on April 1, the Russian Defense Ministry once again announced the complete capture of Luhansk Oblast by its troops. In fact, Ukrainian forces — units of the Third Assault Brigade — remain in the region," the unit said.
The brigade said that Russian forces had carried out 144 assault attempts in settlements near the Luhansk-Donetsk border over the past six months, involving over 260 Russian soldiers. Russia has lost up to 260 personnel in the attempts, the brigade said.
The battlefield monitoring group DeepState showed the same settlements unoccupied as of April 1.
Accurately measuring the control, loss, and gain of territory along the front lines is increasingly difficult, as the contested "grey zone" between Ukrainian and Russian-held territory widens.
Luhansk Oblast makes up part of Ukraine's Donbas and is one of four regions that the Russian Federation has claimed as its own. Russian troops have occupied Luhansk Oblast since the 2014 Donbas invasion. In September 2002, Russia illegally declared its annexation of Luhansk along with Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
Russia continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw troops from the entire Donbas region, including areas Kyiv still controls. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on April 1 that President Volodymyr Zelensky should decide "already today" to surrender the region.
The demand came a day after Zelensky said Russia had given Kyiv two months to pull its forces from Donbas or face additional conditions in U.S.-mediated peace talks, which have stalled amid the continuing war in Iran.
